Faculty facilitator(s) and student colleagues from VIU’s first cohort of the Online Learning and Teaching Diploma program (OLTD) share reflections and insights on engaging a community of practice to support student success in an online graduate program. Samples of students’ work as seminar facilitiators will be featured and a question and answer-style discussion will engage delegates in discourse regarding community and relationship building online. http://etug.ca/2013/04/11/spring-workshop-2013-keynote-and-facilitators/#kimberly

1. 
OLTD
Building communities of practice in an online course
Kim Lemieux
OLTD Program
Vancouver Island University

2. Design Context
 Goal was to create an opportunity for students to live the
experience of facilitating online communication
 Most of cohort were classroom teachers with little or no online
teaching experience
 This course was the third online course in the program, so
students were familiar with environment and each other
 Program’s focus is to expose educators to best practice in online
teaching and learning while allowing them practical experience

3.  Course Textbook:
Kear, K. (2010)
Online and Social
Networking
Communities: A
best practice guide
for educators.

4. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory

5. Course Design

6. Emerging Themes
 The not so small matter of ‘presence’
 Moving outside the Learning Management System (LMS)
 Trying out new teaching tools
 Working collaboratively to facilitate online
 Asynchronous vs Synchronous

7. What the students had to say…
Teaching online has quickly taught me that
interaction and community increase
exponentially when we allow learners to
participate in producer type activities such
as collaborating, moderating, leading and
sharing. This was very evident in this
course as well, I found that the student led
seminars drew out many people that may not
have brought their thoughts to the forefront
if the course had been mainly instructor
led.

8. I think that often, in our eagerness
to demonstrate how available we are
to our online learners, we "over-
sell" ourselves and our
availability. There seems to be a
fine line between too much and not
enough. I think taking on the role
of facilitator and student during
these past 6 weeks, has allowed many
of us to see teacher presence in a
new light.
What the students had to say…

9. Telling is not knowing
 I appreciate that you let us go our own way during the student led
seminar weeks, even if by your own admission you had to "bite
your tongue" several times.
 I’ve always been a very independent person and learner; therefore group
projects have been a consistent challenge for me. However, I now more
readily recognize the benefit of having someone else to collaborate with and
to bounce ideas off of. By listening to other points of view and reflecting
upon other people’s perspectives I have been able to create deeper
understandings and beliefs myself.

10. Without a doubt I would argue that the trust and
sense of community that we had established online
was genuine and every bit as real as a face to face
classroom.
… it dawned on me how effective our diverse
strategies of largely asynchronous communication had
been. This is something I would not have felt
possible at the start of the OLTD program.

11. Tools used in 503
Haiku Deck
Storybird
Crowdsourcing

12. Lessons Learned
- students appreciated the
open-ended format of this
assignment
- students enjoyed the
opportunity to collaborate with
a partner in facilitating a
seminar
- participants in the seminars
strived to ensure that seminar
leaders were successful in their
facilitation
- students were cognizant of
information overload

13. Lessons Learned
- students were introduced
to many tools in previous
OLTD courses. This
assignment enabled them to
apply these tools to an
instructional task
- students would have
preferred if the cohort had
not been split into two
groups
- a spirit of co-operation
enhanced all course

14. Last thoughts, burning
questions….
Enso Circle
(retrieved from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Enso_circle.jpg)